


The Getaway

by spaceboy



Category: Archie Sheridan & Gretchen Lowell Series - Chelsea Cain, Gretchen Lowell Series - Chelsea Cain
Genre: Denial, F/M, Mild Sexual Content, No Sex, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2020-02-10
Packaged: 2021-02-18 08:22:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 14,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21841168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spaceboy/pseuds/spaceboy
Summary: An encounter with a serial bomber leaves Henry dead, Susan hospitalized, and Archie ready to walk away from everything. Gretchen's perfectly happy to help him with that, but they have a few loose ends to tie up first....
Relationships: Gretchen Lowell/Archie Sheridan
Kudos: 2





	1. Chapter 1

Henry was dead.

There was plenty more that Archie could be thinking about. He could dwell on the fact that Susan was still in critical condition, too early to say if there was any chance of her making it out. He could focus on the heat of hatred swelling in him like he had never felt before, that he knew was going to burst out in ways he didn’t want to think he was capable of. He could wonder whether he would be capable of anything at all in a few hours when his pills ran out, since the past few days had been so high intensity that he had forgotten to keep track of how many he was taking, how close he was getting to running out. He could remember that he also hadn’t slept in the past couple days and was having trouble focusing on reality.

But he didn’t think about any of that. Henry was dead, and that was the only thing that was real now. 

He insisted on speaking at the press conference, despite the Chief telling him over and over that he didn’t have to. He did have to, because this was something he knew how to do, some trace of normalcy he could cling to when the world had gone up in flames. He felt far away as he spoke, stating the bare facts in an unaffected tone. That the still unnamed bomber had struck again, at the Heathman Hotel downtown. That Detective Henry Sobol had been killed in the explosion, that a civilian – name withheld – but it was Susan – was in critical condition. That they were following leads and still were hopeful of apprehending a suspect.

He didn’t say that it was his fault. He didn’t say that Susan was the one with the leads, and she wouldn’t be able to share them anytime soon, if ever. He didn’t say that he was going to remove himself from the case because if he did find the suspect, he wouldn’t apprehend him, he would tear his guts out. Maybe with a crochet hook, the way Gretchen would. He didn’t say that he was thinking about removing himself from the case by going straight home from the conference and blowing his brains out.

He didn’t make the call immediately. Even when nothing else made sense anymore, he still had a routine when he got home, and he could still follow it. He took out his gun, unloaded it, put it in a drawer with the bullets in a different drawer. Force of habit – a very, very old habit, from when he still lived with Debbie and the kids. He took four pills, hands shaking. It was more than he should have let himself have, but now was not the time to ration. He fed the dog and took her out briefly. It was easy to put off what he needed to help the dog. He wondered dully if that’s why she had left the dog with him. He had met plenty of homeless people who only had the motivation to take care of themselves because they knew they needed to be alive to take care of their pets. Maybe she had suspected it would work for him too. 

Only then did he sink down to sit on the floor in front of the couch and get out the phone. Even sitting on the couch sounded hard. The floor was easier. It expected less of him. The dog sniffed at him for a minute, but decided he was too damp to sit on, and wandered off to her bed on the other side of the room. He was still in his soaked uniform, and he wasn’t sure if he was shivering because of the cold, or the exhaustion, or the anticipation, a combination of excitement and terror, of making the call. His blood, on the other hand, felt too hot under the skin of his wrists.

The phone had been vibrating in his pocket all day. He had ignored it all day, but he hadn’t turned it off. The near-constant buzzing was comforting -- and satisfying, because he knew he was keeping her waiting. There were forty three missed calls, all from the same number. Ninety-seven texts, from the same number, all with the same message:

CALL ME, DARLING 

He closed his eyes and hit the button before he could change his mind, and pressed the phone to his ear, waiting without breathing through the first two rings.

“Darling? Are you all right?”

Her voice was shaking, tight with fear. He had never heard her like this before. He hadn’t ever expected to. Sure, he had believed she was capable of this kind of emotion. But not that she would ever show it to him. Henry said she had sounded scared last Halloween. Archie hadn’t believed it. Now, the sound of it took him by surprise so much that he couldn’t answer for a moment. How was he supposed to respond to this version of her?

“Archie?” she persisted, in the same strained tone. “Talk to me, darling. Please.”

“I’m here,” he choked out, even more stunned by the ‘please.’ 

“Are you safe? How many pills have you had? What are you thinking of doing?”

Too many questions, all tumbling one after the other, almost in panic. This wasn’t the Gretchen he knew. This wasn’t the Gretchen he needed. And at this stage in the game there was no point denying that he needed her.

“Sweetheart, you’re scaring me.”

There was a pause. A slow breath on the other end of the line and a careful release of it. “I’m sorry.” Those weren’t words he wanted to hear from her either, but her voice had strengthened and smoothed. She was putting her facade back up. Funny, how much he had wanted for years to see her without that mask, and now that he had, he was begging her to put it back on. If only it had been any other day. “Listen to me, darling. I need you to understand this.” The tone was still urgent, but steady, firm. His shoulders began to relax. He let his head fall back against the couch. This was the voice he needed to hear. “Are you with me?”

“Yes,” he murmured.

“I need you to know that this was not part of the plan. I never meant for this to happen. I need you to believe that.”

The pieces fell into place. After everything that had happened in the last two days, Archie wasn’t even phased by the revelation that this was Gretchen’s fault. Of course it was. How could he have missed that. “The bomber. He’s one of your time bombs.” Archie laughed, sudden, harsh and guttural through the old scar tissue in his throat. “A time bomb bomber.” It wasn’t funny, but what could he do but laugh? 

“Of course he was.” He could hear her sad smile through the phone. “No one place can make this many killers naturally, darling, not even Oregon. He’s an old one. He was with me when you first started looking for me. But he was too unpredictable, too dangerous to have around, even for me. He took it badly when I pushed him away."

"You mean when he found out you were going to kill him."

"Yes. He rigged our apartment building and set it off while he was inside. I thought he was dead.”

“Another fucking Ryan Motley? How many time bombs you left out there was the wrong question, wasn’t it? The right question was how many of them are your mistakes. He’s been active for almost a year. If you didn’t set him on me, if you didn’t mean for this to happen, then when exactly were you planning on telling me any of this?” 

“I thought –” A frantic note had crept back into her voice, and she stopped, taking a few deep breaths to pull herself back together again before continuing. “I thought I could talk him down on my own. I was wrong.”

“You were wrong and now Susan is dying and Henry is dead because you thought you could keep playing your fucking headgames with no consequences!” Archie didn’t remember standing up but now he was on his feet, screaming into the receiver. The dog was staring at him wide-eyed and tail-tucked. Even his dog knew he was losing it.  
“I know. I’m sorry. Please believe me.”

He wouldn’t have believed her if she had sounded the way she did when she answered the phone. He wouldn’t have believed her if she had cried, as he had seen her do once before. He wouldn’t have believed her if she had sounded like she cared. But her voice was flat, matter of fact. She was only stating a fact. She was only telling the truth.

“I believe you.” He let out a long, shaking sigh and started pacing the floor. It was more difficult than it should have been. His legs were shaking badly and every few steps he had to stop as a wave of vertigo tilted the room on its end. “I believe you fucked up and I believe you’re sorry, but that doesn’t change what happened.” He stopped at the kitchenette counter to lean against it heavily, supporting himself with one arm while the other clutched the phone so hard against his ear that it was starting to be sore. He opened the drawer and took out the gun. Opened the other drawer. Took out the bullets. Put them next to each other on the counter and stared down at them. “And it doesn’t change what I’m going to do now. That’s what you were afraid of, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” she admitted.

“I guess at least we finally figured out what it takes to make you have an honest conversation.” He switched on speakerphone and set the phone on the counter. It was going to take everything he had to stay on his feet while he loaded the gun. 

“Before you do something stupid, I want you to hear me out.”

“Isn’t that what I just did? You told me this was all your fault. I told you I believed you. Now we’re moving on to the consequences.” The bullets clattered across the counter as his fingers, numb from following the cold outdoors with minutes of holding too tightly to the phone, failed to grasp them. 

“Just listen, Archie,” she said, and he smiled at the touch of exasperation in her voice. That was an emotion he didn’t mind her having. There was an odd satisfaction in annoying her – probably the satisfaction of knowing that as much power as she had over him, at least he could get under her skin now and then. The satisfaction that he still wasn’t completely bent to her. “I know it hurts. I know all you can think about wanting right now is making it stop.”

“That’s all I’ve wanted for the past five years; thanks for finally noticing.”

“But it’s not all you’ve wanted, and it’s not all you want now, either.”

She paused – for breath? For dramatic effect? Whatever it was, Archie was having none of it. He rolled his eyes hard enough that his vertigo returned and he had to drop the bullets again to clutch the counter as the room spun. “Well? Go on, keep telling me that you know better than me what I want. What is it that I do want, if you’re so smart?”

“Darling,” she sighed, “why are you making this difficult? You don’t have to pretend with me. I do know what you want better than you do. I made you. And what you want is me. You’ve been fighting for so long to pretend you don’t still need me, to pretend you’re getting better, to pretend you don’t want to give yourself up to me. If you’re going to die, at least let yourself stop fighting first. Let yourself rest.”

He wanted to tell her to fuck off. He wanted to lie to her, to tell her she was wrong, to convince her that she didn’t own him after all. He wanted to finish loading the gun and let her hear the shot over the phone. He wanted her to be powerless to do anything about it. 

Instead, he started crying.

Because more than any of that, he wanted exactly what she was offering. He wanted her.

“Will you put the gun away for me, darling?” she asked softly.

He nodded, even though she couldn’t see him. He couldn’t speak yet. He opened the drawers. Swept the bullets into one. Laid the gun in the other. Took a deep breath and wiped his face on his sleeve -- before remembering that his sleeve, like the rest of him, was still soaked, and didn’t do anything but smear the moisture around his face. “It’s away,” he choked out finally.

She released a breath. “Good boy.”

There was a silence. Archie was leaning heavily on the counter, most of his energy going towards not falling over and keeping his crying under control enough that he would be able to keep talking. He didn’t know what she was doing. He couldn’t even hear her breathing over his own. 

“Now what?” he said, voice hoarse.

“I can get to you in twenty-four hours. Until then, I need you to take care of yourself. I know you don’t feel like it, but it will keep you busy, which will help you stay alive for me. Turn on the TV -- not the news, anything but the news, just something so you don’t feel all alone there. Take a shower. Eat something. It doesn’t have to be much, but you can’t keep self-medicating on an empty stomach. Clean anything that needs it. When you’re done, or when you can’t keep moving anymore, or when you start to think about the gun again, call me back.”

“Can you just -- can you just stay on the line?”

“I need to make a few arrangements so I can get on the road to you. The sooner I get this done, the sooner I’ll get there. Once I’m in transit, I can stay on the line as long as you need me. Just try to keep busy for an hour or two, okay?”

“Okay.” It wasn’t okay, and he knew she could tell from the shudder in his voice. His hand still rested on the handle of the drawer with the gun in it.

“Darling?”

“Yes.”

“I’m going to hang up now. I need you to do your best to follow directions. But if you so much as think about the gun again, you’ll call me back immediately. Because if I get to Portland and you’re already dead, I’ll have to find someone else in Portland to hurt. Or in Vancouver, maybe. Debbie and her renewable energy specialist are still in Vancouver, aren’t they?”

The corners of his mouth twitched up into what passed, for Archie, for a smile. “There’s my girl,” he said. She was finally sounding like herself again.

She laughed. “Go take a shower, Archie. You must be a mess.”

The line went dead. He took the phone with him into the bathroom. The phone had, all at once, become as much of a security blanket as the pill box was. He peeled off his damp uniform and leaned over the sink, looking at himself in the mirror -- not at his face, he didn’t want to meet his own eyes ever again -- but at his scarred torso, the part of himself that connected him to her. For a long time the most painful part of himself to acknowledge, now it was the only part he wanted to be real. He ran a hand over each scar in turn, reminding himself of what he usually tried to forget: how each one felt when she gave it to him. There were only a few that weren’t hers -- and even those were still connected to her. The longest, most gnarled one that ran down the center of his chest, where the surgeons at Emmanuel had gone in to repair his esophagus. The one on his lower left abdomen -- she had made the original cut there, but the doctors had opened it up again, and then she had stabbed him there again, and then someone else had shot him there -- at this point that whole part of his body was a mesh of overlapping scar tissue. And the triangles along his left thigh -- those, he had done himself, in a weird attempt at connection with a boy whom he had believed understood some of what he had been through.

He had been wrong. Jeremy had just been sick. There was no one else who understood any of this. No one except Gretchen.

He turned the water on, turned the temperature all the way up, and waited until it was steaming to step under the stream.

Of course, immediately, the phone rang. 

He nearly fell trying to get out of the shower to get to the phone as fast as possible, barely catching himself on the sink and scrambling to get the phone to his ear. “Miss me already, Sweetheart?” he said.

“Archie, I just saw you on the news, why the hell didn’t you tell me what was going on?” demanded Debbie. “Wait -- what did you just say?”

“Nothing,” he said quickly. Fuck fuck fuck, he thought. “I’m so sorry, I know I should have called you, but I’m barely keeping myself going right now, I -- ”

“No, no no no no, back the fuck up, Archie, what did you say when you picked up?”

“I didn’t -- ”

“Who did you think was calling?”

He hung up.

The phone rang again immediately. This time he looked at the Caller ID. It was Debbie again. He got back in the shower, and let it ring.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Murr Chrismus have something awful :D

By the time he got out of the shower, she had finally given up on calling, and he, surprisingly, had actually started to feel a little better. He put on dry clothes. He turned the TV to an old black and white movie on AMC and turned up the volume. Gretchen was right, hearing people did make him feel less alone -- people he didn’t have to actually engage with but who could keep him company in a way. He ate a bowl of cereal. He even did clean up a little. He wondered whether she meant to kill him here or take him away with her, and whether he should pack a bag in case. But the last time he had left with her, she had stocked an entire closet for him ahead of time, so probably not. If she was taking him away she would probably want him to make a clean break, so that anything he had from then on came from her. The more he thought about it, about the possibility of leaving with her, the more some of his pain started to transform into anticipation. He was really going to go through with it. He was really going to be with her. For good -- whether ‘for good’ meant a few hours of torture or a few weeks of bliss before the end. He wasn’t even sure which option he was hoping for.

Where the pain had left him almost immobilized, the excitement made him jittery. He couldn’t sit still -- which was a problem since the vertigo, as well as the growing stiffness in his banged-up body, was still making it difficult to walk. He might try taking the dog out, though. He grabbed his coat -- he would at least make an effort to stay dry this time -- and a leash, but there was a banging on the door before he could attache the leash to the dog.

There was no peephole -- kind of an unfortunate omission for someone who periodically had a serial killer turn up at his door. Fortunately, he didn’t need to see out, because she started yelling as soon as she finished knocking. “Open the fucking door, Archie!” Debbie shouted. 

He considered hiding until she went away. Ginger chose that moment to start barking in annoyance that he was still holding her leash and yet she was clearly not yet being walked.

The possible scenarios flashed through his head in a loop.

One. He didn’t answer the door. She didn’t go away -- she had already come all this way; she was not going to be deterred now. She called the cops to say he was likely either killing himself or harboring an escaped convict. Or she stayed outside the door and Gretchen found her there.

Two. He answered the door. She came in, she yelled at him, she grabbed his phone off the counter, she confirmed that he had talked to Gretchen. She called the cops and they took the phone and Gretchen would think he was trying to trap her, and she wouldn’t come.

Three. He answered the door. She came in, she yelled at him, she grabbed his phone off the counter, she confirmed that he had talked to Gretchen. To stop her from calling the cops, he hurt her. Slammed her head against the wall. Knocked her out? Killed her? Locked her in the closet until Gretchen came and probably killed her anyway?

Option One. Option Two. Option Three.

She was hammering on the door again. She was still yelling.

Option One. Option Two. Option Three.

All of a sudden, his mind went clear and calm.   
Though she threatened it frequently, Gretchen had never actually hurt his family, because that wasn’t what she wanted from them. What she wanted was for him to prove that she didn’t have to hurt them, because they didn’t matter to him anymore.

Option Four.

While Debbie screamed and hammered on the door, Archie made his halting way over to the counter. Now that his hands were warm from the shower, and his mind was steadier, it was much easier to take out the gun and load it.

He shoved the dog into the closet with a foot and closed the accordian door on her. She whined and scratched at the door, but it was easier than trying to deal with her and Debbie at the same time.

He opened the door mid-knock, and raised the gun.

Debbie was soaked, hair tangled and frizzed. She looked almost as bad as he must. She took an automatic step back in the face of the gun. “Archie, what the fuck.” Her voice came out hushed, almost a whisper. Her eyes flicked away from the gun to the room behind him, searching. “Is she here?”

“No. You’re right,” he said, voice steadier than it had been all day, “I’ve talked to her. She’s coming. But she isn’t here yet. She isn’t making me do this. I’m doing this for me, and for you.” He stepped forward, and Debbie stepped backward, backed up against the far wall of the hall now. She glanced both ways down the hall, but there was no one else there. The building was old, thick-walled and sparsely populated. He took another step forward and pressed the gun against her forehead. Her breathing was fast, gasping and uneven, but her glare was steady and withering. He remembered why he loved her. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Fuck you.”

“Go home, Debbie. Go home to your husband and your children.”

“They’re your children, Archie,” she hissed. 

“I don’t have any children.” The wave of relief that washed over him from finally saying that out loud, to Debbie, was staggering. The gun wavered. She might have used that moment to take it from him, if she had had the training, if she hadn’t been too furious to think. “I don’t want anything to do with them. Or you. So go home. Tell them I’m fine, or tell them I’m dead. Tell them whatever you want. Pretend this never happened. Pretend you moved on like you should have done five years ago. And if you say a single word to anyone about Gretchen, if you do anything to stop her from getting to me, you won’t have to worry about her anymore. Because I’ll kill you myself. Understand?”

Debbie nodded, just a tiny bit, her forehead pressing against the barrel of the gun as she did, flyaway threads of hair catching against it.

Archie lowered the gun and stepped back into the apartment. “Go.”

She ran.


	3. Chapter 3

He closed the door and leaned back heavily against it, letting the gun drop to his side, fingers barely holding onto it now. He had remained steady the whole time he was talking to her, but now that it was over he was shaking so badly he could barely stay on his feet. It was several minutes before he was able to walk over to the kitchenette, unload the gun, put it away, and let the suspiciously quiet Ginger out of the closet. Naturally, while trapped in the same closet with her food bag, she had managed to chew a hole in it, spill it across the floor, and scarf up several days’ worth. 

Archie’s usually hyperactive sense of guilt was also suspiciously quiet about what he had just done. Maybe it was broken. Maybe he honestly didn’t care anymore. More likely it was overloaded so much that it couldn’t process any new sins yet, and it would come flooding back if he ever allowed himself to relax or feel good about something again.

He took the overstuffed dog out for a brief walk, distracted the whole time by checking the cars parked nearby to make sure Debbie’s Subaru Outback wasn’t among them. He didn’t see it, which he hoped meant she really had gone home.

Back inside, he was surprised to realize how late it was, and how tired he was. He wasn’t really thinking about sleeping, was he? But the nervous energy had seeped out of him and left him feeling drained and heavy. He undressed and got into bed. He couldn’t remember the last time he had actually slept in his own bed. He had been taking catnaps on the couch and dozing off at his desk for days. This wasn’t just emotional exhaustion; he was probably past the point of being able to physically stay awake. He took two more pills, and finally dialed her number again. 

“Still alive, darling?” There was a distant roar distorting the sound, probably the combination of wind and traffic and poor connection that came from connecting the phone to a car stereo. She was en route.

“Yeah.” He closed his eyes, wanting to block out everything but the sound of her voice. Which of course meant that was the moment the dog chose to jump onto the bed and nuzzle at his face. How dare he pay attention to not her? “You two are practically the same person,” he muttered as he placated Ginger with ear scritches.

“Who?” asked Gretchen.

“You and Ginger. Although I guess you probably wouldn’t make yourself sick on dog food because I left you alone for five minutes.”

“Never assume you know what I would and wouldn’t do, darling.” Her tone was light, and he laughed, a real, honest laugh this time, which surprised him as much as anything else that had happened today.

“I have to confess something,” he said, still smiling a little even though he was nervous about having this conversation.

“Uh oh. Have you been bad?”

“I got out the gun again. It wasn’t for me, though.”

“That’s intriguing. Who was it for?”

“Don’t get too excited; I didn’t actually shoot her. But I threatened Debbie with it.”

Even over the sketchy cell connection, he could hear her sharp intake of breath. From anyone else, it might have been a sound of shock, or fear. From Gretchen, he was quite sure it was arousal, and he smiled more. “Tell me,” she breathed.

As he told her what happened, the twinges of guilt returned, twisting his stomach with nerves, but he found them increasingly easy to ignore as he listened to her delighted reactions. 

“You haven’t been bad at all,” she laughed when he had finished. “That’s very, very good. I’ll have to think of how to reward you for that.”

Now it was Archie’s turn to draw in a sharp, aroused breath. It wasn’t even that he assumed the ‘reward’ would be a sexual one. It was the reminder of having been wholly dependent on her, when a reward meant a respite from pain, a moment of rest or a kind touch, when everything that happened to him was because of what she decided to punish or reward him for. “God, I want you so badly.”

“Soon, darling. Are you touching yourself?”

He wasn’t surprised to realize that his hand had unconsciously moved downward, or that she had known it before he did. “Yes.”

“Stop.”

“What?”

“You heard me. Take your hand off your cock. Wait for me.”

She had never told him not to before -- she had always enjoyed flaunting the sexual side of his obsession with her. He hesitated. He’d barely started, and he knew he was just going to stay hard as long as her voice stayed in his ear. She heard the silence, the hesitation.

“Do I have to tell you again?” Her voice purred dangerously. 

“No,” he gasped, wrenching his hand away. “I stopped, I stopped.”

“Good.”

“So what do I do now?” He was suddenly hyper-aware of how heavy and strained his breathing sounded, and he was sure she was relishing his desperation.

“You lie there and enjoy wanting me and not being able to do anything about it.”

“Enjoy isn’t the word I would use.” But even as he said it he knew that wasn’t quite true. 

“You should get some sleep, anyway. You must be exhausted, and we have a lot of work ahead of us once I get to you. You should sleep while you can.”

“You’re right, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to. I don’t sleep well in general, and now I have all this going on and you’re blue-balling me.”

"The technical term is ‘denial.’”

“Whatever.”

“What would help you sleep? Besides masturbation, I mean. Would you like me to count with you?”

His breath caught in his throat. For a moment his neglected hard-on was forgotten. “I never told you about that.” It was a trick he had gotten from his mother, that he had used with his kids. You counted each breath aloud, until you got tired enough that you naturally stopped counting and drifted off to sleep without noticing it.

“Darling, when are you going to learn that I don’t do anything halfway? Do you really think the day I walked into the Task Force office was the first time I saw you in the flesh? Do you really believe your bullshit theory that everything I did to you was unplanned? I followed your career through the papers from the day you found my signature. I watched you in person for a year before I let you see me. I’ve been closer than you ever realized, for longer than you ever suspected.”

“Jesus Christ, Gretchen. That’s insane.” A rush of mixed emotions hit him like a truck. Fear, at realizing how long she had been that close to him while she was still unknown and active, anger and violation at knowing how close she had been to his family when he still thought of them as family, before he had ever done anything to hurt them, and -- comfort, at knowing she had been watching over him even before he had known her. 

“I am widely considered to be a psychopath. You really shouldn’t let yourself forget little details like that. They might be important.”

“Oookay. You know what? I’m too tired to unpack that whole revelation right now.” He turned the phone on speaker again and set it on the nightstand. “Yes. Count with me.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THIS one is where the bigass self-harm TW goes, jsyk.

He woke up early in the morning. He was panicking, but he didn’t know why. It came back to him a piece at a time. 

Henry.

His stomach clenched. He wished he hadn’t woken up. That it had been a bad dream.

Debbie.

He sat bolt upright, breath coming short. What had he done?

Gretchen.

He grabbed the phone and hit redial.

“Good morning, darling.”

Her voice is calm this time, casual, as if they were back in the interrogation room in Salem, just another Sunday together. His isn’t.

“Yesterday was real?”

“Yes, it was.”

“You’re coming?”

“I’ll be there this evening.”

He checked the clock on the bedside table. It was impressive that he had managed to sleep through the night, but even so, it was barely dawn. “What am I supposed to do until then? I feel like I’m losing my mind and I only just woke up.”

“Do you want to go to work?”

“I don’t think I can.”

“Then you’d better call in sick, to start with. People tend to start looking for you pretty quickly if you don’t turn up where you’re supposed to. They start jumping to conclusions,   
start thinking maybe I’ve kidnapped you.”

“How silly of them. But I’m afraid they’ll be suspicious even if I do call in. I never call in during a case.”

“This is an unusual circumstance, even for you. They’ll understand that.”

“Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. I’ll do that. And then what? I feel like I’ll explode if I just sit here all day.” His hand reached automatically for the pillbox, and he rememered how few were left. “And I’m running really low on pills.”

“Why don’t you call in to work first, and then call me back and we’ll talk about getting you through the day. I have an idea that might help.”

“All right. Thank you.”

As he hung up he remembered an interview of Susan’s he had read, with a private investigator. Most of his work was finding proof of infidelity for suspicious spouses, and the first thing he said to look for if you think someone’s cheating on you is if they call the same number first thing in the morning and last thing at night.

Archie wasn’t cheating on anyone, not anymore. But he still felt like he was, and his actions still fit the bill. 

Nobody was suspicious or angry when he called in. They were only sympathetic and concerned. They asked if he needed anything, if he wanted anyone to stop by. He felt bad about lying when they were so nice about it. At the same time, he felt angry that none of them realized something was wrong. Henry would never have left him alone in a situation like this. Claire wouldn’t have either. Fuck. Claire. If he wasn’t going to be at work, he should be with Claire. One more person he was neglecting when she most needed him. One more sin to add to the list.

He felt a million times worse by the time he called Gretchen back.

“You need a distraction,” she explained. “And I won’t be able to stay on the phone long; I have to keep moving. So you need a distraction and it can’t be me.”

“And apparently it can’t be masturbating.”

“Even for you, masturbating all day might be overdoing it. But you’re correct. I like thinking of you wanting me and not being able to get relief..”

“So I’m supposed to sit here all day thinking about how I can’t get off?”

“That wasn’t what I had in mind, but if you think that would do it for you, you’re welcome to.”

“I don’t think that would last me all day.”

“That’s what I thought. So I was thinking, since sex isn’t on the table, you might get a head start on the other thing you’re anticipating.”

He put two pills in his mouth and chewed them, letting the acrid taste bite his mouth, before answering.

“Pain.”

“Bingo. Have you ever cut yourself? Intentionally, I mean.”

“Only once. With Jeremy.” He had a series of triangle-shaped scars on his leg to remind him of that awkward interaction.

“Ah, yes. Him.” Her voice turned cold for a moment. She hadn’t appreciated Jeremy’s attempts to imitate and impress her, and Archie tried hard to push away the image of   
Jeremy hanging from hooks, empty eyesockets gaping as she carved away the scars he had given himself in her honor, and the feeling of his hand keeping pressure on Jeremy’s severed artery a second before he chose to let the boy bleed out. “Well, that will make it easier for you to find a place to start. Do something to cover up that embarrassment. You don’t need to be reminded of him every time you look at yourself.”

“Only of you.”

“Exactly. After you fix that, anything more you do is up to you. Just don’t cover up any of my work. Arms and legs are the most convenient canvases. And make sure you only cut across the wrists; you’re not allowed to bleed out on me.”

“I wouldn’t dare.”

“Do you think that’s enough of an assignment to keep you out of trouble?”

“I think I can manage.”

“Good. And I have more pills for you, so you only have to worry about making yours last till this evening.”

“You’re the best.”

“I know I am. Now, I won’t be able to talk again until I get there. Is there anything else you need to hear before I go?”

“You probably know the answer to that better than I do.”

“You’re learning quickly. This is what you need to hear: You don’t need to worry about any of this. I have it under control. I have you under control. You’re going to do exactly what I told you to do. You’re going to hurt yourself for me. You’re going to wait for me. You’re going to be all right.”

“Thank you.” It was all he could say, and all he needed to say. 

“I’ll see you soon, darling.”

She hung up. He stared at the phone, willing her to call back, to text, but knowing she wouldn’t. The rest of the day was on him. But he knew what he was supposed to do with it now, and it was something he could handle. He took an extra pill, took the dog out, even scrambled an egg and ate it, trying to make everything take as much time as possible. Not because he was afraid to do what she had told him to, but because he was afraid it still wouldn’t be enough to get him through the entire day.

Finally, there was nothing else to do, and the high of talking to her was wearing off, being gradually replaced by an emptiness, an emptiness that somehow still hurt.

As much as she enjoyed the aesthetic of scalpels, her traditional tool of choice, from the beginning, had been X-ACTO knives. He didn’t have exactly either of those, but he had a box cutter, too wide for precision but a close-enough approximation to what she would have used.

He went into the bathroom, closing the door to keep Ginger out. She whined and scratched at the door for a minute, before getting distracted and wandering off to murder a squeaky toy. Archie took off his pants and sat in the empty tub, the best way, he figured, to make sure this would be easy to clean up. He wasn’t sure whose benefit that was for. The landlord? The crime scene cleaners?

He traced the thin, flat triangular scars on his leg. They weren’t very bad compared to the others. They were barely raised, more just discolored lines in his skin. They might even disappear completely given enough time. They would be easy to cover up. With any of the others, it would have been a chore just to cut through the ropy layers of scar tissue. But with these, all he had to do was decide what to cover them with and cut right across them. 

Keeping his mind fixed on Gretchen was the only thing stopping him from digging the box cutter straight into his wrist — down the street, not across the road. Instead he laid the edge of the blade against his inner thigh, took a deep breath, and let it out as he pressed down and pulled it smoothly across the skin. He knew how to do this, knew not to cut too deeply or it would damage more than the skin and wouldn’t scar properly. He waited — there was a delay before the air hit the nerve endings and the pain began. When it did, he almost laughed. After broken ribs and surgery without anesthesia and stabbings and gunshots, the quiet sting of the cut felt like a gentle reminder from an old friend.   
He watched the blood bead to the surface and felt the beginnings of the calm of endorphins. Maybe he had been wrong. Maybe he COULD keep doing this all day. Maybe he could keep doing this forever.

He went slowly, making himself wait to be sure each stroke was beginning to clot before making the next. He wasn’t allowed to bleed out. He wasn’t worried about it at first — he knew what he was doing, knew the anatomy well enough to be sure — but as time went on his hands started shaking with an overload of adrenaline and he had to be more careful. By the time he finished his leg, the tub was running with blood, and he wasn’t ready to stop. The rest wasn’t as thought-out, though. The marks on his thigh had been planned, chosen to honor her. But this part was about causing himself pain, pure and simple. It was what he wanted, and what he deserved.


	5. Chapter 5

When he stopped, it wasn’t because he wanted to, or because he consciously realized that he had gone too far, but because he simply didn’t have the energy or fine motor control left to keep going. He didn’t have the willpower to get up, either. He had brought the pills with him, left the pillbox on the edge of the tub, and he tipped it up now and emptied the last remaining tablets into his hand and swallowed them dry. The sink looked miles away. He leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes. He didn’t sleep, but he wasn’t all there either. He was in some comfortable middle distance of swirling blood and endorphines and guilt and Vicodin.

He heard the door open as if it was miles away, and listened without comprehension or emotion to the soft footsteps crossing the living room and rushing down the hall to him. And then she was there in the door, and then she was in the tub with him, straddling him and gathering him into her arms. She was holding him tight, fingers clenching, nails biting into his flesh. She smelled like lilacs. She had him, he was safe, he was home. As soon as he understood, tears started streaming from his eyes to dampen the sleeve of her shirt where his head rested on her shoulder.

“Shhhh,” she soothed, holding his head against her and smoothing his hair. “You’re all right now. I’ve got you.”

“Don’t let me go,” he whispered.

They sat in silence for minutes, till he stopped shaking with sobs and took a few raggged empty breaths. Then she maneuvered him gently back till he was resting against the tiled wall. She leaned in over him, and he thought she might kiss him, and then he felt it. The cold thin line of a blade -- a scalpel of course, always a scalpel -- laid against the skin of his neck. 

"Do you want me to do it?" she asked in a low tone. "I will, this time, if you ask me to."

_He is back in the basement. Five years ago. Strapped to the table, trying to stop coughing blood, six ribs broken, the scar on his abdomen itching and burning with infection. He doesn't want to survive this. He just wants it to end._

_She trails the scalpel idly over his chest, looping around the still-bleeding heart she has carved into him. She isn't cutting him anymore, just teasing, just playing with him. Then gradually the blade moves higher until it comes to rest on his throat. It presses just a little into his skin, enough to make an indentation in the skin, not enough to break it. "Do you want me to do it?" she asks._

_He can barely speak anymore, from the damage the drain cleaner has done to his throat, and from how hard it is to breathe when every movement shifts his broken ribs. But this is worth the effort. "Yes," he rasps, eyes fixed on her face, the first trace of hope he has felt in days._

_She rolls her eyes at him, but she doesn't take the scalpel away. "You know you have to do better than that._ Beg _."_

_There is no hesitation. "Please, Gretchen. I want you to do it, please, I'm ready, I want you to kill me, please. . ." Hot tears sting at the corners of his eyes. Maybe this was it. Maybe it was going to be over._

"Darling?" Here, now, the scalpel bit into him just the tiniest fraction, just enough to draw a thin line of blood like a papercut, just enough to pull him out of the flashback. She hadn't done it then. But she would now, he was sure. And he was equally sure that this was a one-time offer. This once, she really was giving him the choice to make it quick. It was all he wanted.

It was all he had _thought_ he wanted. 

"No," he said, voice soggy from crying. “No, I don't want you to do it. I want you to take me with you. I want to be with you.”

She held the scalpel steady; she didn't seem quite ready to believe him. The fingers of her other hand brushed down his cheek and along his jaw to cup his chin. “If I take you, you know what I’ll make you do.”

“Yes. I’ll do it. I’ll kill for you. I love you.” It all rushed out at once, through the shaking of the last dry sobs. “Please, take me with you.”

Her smile was radiant. She dropped the scalpel to the floor and kissed him, and for the first time he kissed her back without restraint, without hiding how much he needed her.

“Let me see what you’ve done for me,” she murmured when she pulled away, lips still nearly touching his. She leaned across the edge of the tub to reach a purse she had dropped on the floor. She took his hand and held his arm up, wiped the blood from each cut in turn, a long series of them starting at his wrist and going up past the inside of his elbow. She doused a piece of gauze with something from a small bottle and wiped it across the first cut. The flashing sting of it cut through everything else. He hissed in a breath and jerked the hand away. “We need to get this cleaned up before we can get you out of here,” she said patiently.

“Sorry,” he said between gritted teeth, putting his hand back in hers. “But you know, I’m pretty sure you’re not actually supposed to use alcohol on open wounds.”

“Not if you want them to heal quickly and cleanly. Is that what we want?”

“I’m guessing not.”

“Correct. We want it to keep hurting and we want it to scar. So, alcohol. I know it stings, but try to hold still.”

He nodded, and focused on breathing steadily and keeping his arm in place as she cleaned and bandaged each cut. “Much better.” She finished both arms before moving to look at what he had done to replace the triangles on his leg. It was uneven and it took her a moment to decipher it even after she had cleaned away the blood smeared across it.  
When she understood, she smiled at him, then bent her head and ran her tongue up his thigh, over the cuts that spelled out her name. His breath caught as she reached the top, closer to his cock than he could handle. “Oh, did you want something?” she teased.

“God, yes.”

“Good.” She picked up the swab and alcohol again and started to work on the leg. The stinging did nothing to turn him off. “Keep wanting it.”

When the leg was bandaged she held out her arms to him and helped him laboriously to his feet. They were both smeared with his blood. “We need to go now if you want to catch him in time.”

“Catch him?”

“Your bomber. I told you we had work to do. Don’t you want to catch him?”

“Absolutely.”

They got his pants back on him and managed to avoid tripping over Ginger on the way out to the living room -- she had attached herself to Gretchen as soon as she walked in the door. They stopped at the open kitchen.

“Leave your phone on the counter and give me your gun.”

It was surreal, the things that had become routine for them. Just as it was second nature to him to unload the gun when he came into the apartment, it was equally natural to turn over his phone and his gun when she arrived. It went all the way back to that first time, when he had tried to pull the gun just as the drugged coffee kicked in, and all he had managed to do was hold it out to her like a gift.

He set the phone on the counter, took the gun out of the drawer and handed it to her, holding it by the barrel so she could take the handle. She checked the chamber and then held out her free hand, palm up.

This wasn’t the usual routine.

“You want the bullets this time?”

“We may need to use it this time. And there’s no point getting a clean one from your little mob friend if you’re coming with me when we’re done.”

He understood then. She wanted him to be unmistakably implicated in what they were about to do, so he couldn’t back out of going with her once it was done. He opened the other drawer, gathered up the bullets and dropped them into her hand.

She was loading the gun when the knock came at the door.

Knock wasn’t even the right word. It was a demanding, pounding, hammering sound.

Archie knew what that knock meant. He had done it himself a hundred times.

“Portland Police Department, open up!”

Without missing a beat, she dropped the last bullet into place and swung the gun up to aim at Archie’s head.

He raised his hands, an instinctive, automatic reaction. “I didn’t do this, I swear,” he whispered desperately. How fucking dare they ruin this for him? “Please believe me.” She had no reason to believe him. Any other time, using himself as bait to get her here and catch her was exactly what he would have done. But not this time.

She met his pleading eyes, the gun between them, and there was nothing he could do but hold her gaze and hope she could read the truth in his.

The driving knock came a second time.

She lowered the gun. “Debbie,” she spat. “Fucking bitch.”

“Yeah, that’s what she calls you, too.” He dropped his shaking hands to his side and exhaled.

Gretchen was already moving on to the next steps. Her eyes flicked around the room, pausing at the windows, but they were old-fashioned, thick, and more importantly, six stories up. “You didn’t exactly choose this place with a strategic exit in mind, did you?”

“I always thought that’s what you would like about it.”

“You’re sweet. Stupid, but sweet.” Her eyes came to rest back on the door. “I’m sorry. You know I wouldn’t do this if there were another option.”

“I know,” he tried to say, but his throat had gone completely dry, and nothing came out. His stomach felt like he’d just hit the drop on a roller coaster. She moved to position herself at the edge of the door and raised the gun. The officer on the other side called a final warning. Archie recognized the voice. Nguyen.

“Get the door, darling.”

He watched from a mile away as his hand reached out to the door. Unlocked it. Turned the knob. Opened it just as Nguyen was moving to break it in.

Two shots. Immediately as the door opened. Nguyen and his partner never had a chance.

Archie’s hand was still locked around the doorknob. It was the only thing holding him up when his knees buckled and his stomach lurched and he keeled forward and vomited.  
Mostly on her shoes.

“Thanks, that’s exactly what this outfit needed,” said Gretchen, rolling her eyes at him. “Come on, we have to hurry if you don’t want to have to deal with backup too.” She ducked down and pulled his arm over her shoulders so she could support him as he staggered forward with her. He vaguely heard the door swing shut behind them and Ginger’s angry bark at being left behind. Gretchen stepped neatly over Nguyen’s Blazers cap and around the brains spattered across the hallway. Archie squeezed his eyes shut and staggered and walked right through them. “Well, at least now we match,” she grumbled as she dragged him away from the corpses to the back stairs. He was still dragging behind, still stumbling, too much in shock to get his body under control. When they reached the stairwell she shrugged his arm off her shoulders, spun around and shoved him back against the wall.

“Look at me.”

He stared blankly over her shoulder, eyes unfocused, his consciousness still not quite connecting with his body.

She hit him hard across the face, his head whipping to the side withthe force of it.

“Look at me.”

When he looked back at her, his eyes focused this time. He nodded once, deliberately. “I’m here. Let’s go.”

She took his hand and they ran six flights down and out onto the nearly empty street. They passed the dark patrol car parked in front of the building and crossed the street to the gleaming black Challenger parked across from it. They peeled out and down the road just as the lights and sirens rounded the corner behind them. Archie twisted around in the passenger seat to see if the backup units were coming after them, but they stopped in front of the building, officers pouring out of the cars and racing inside. He turned back around and opened the glove compartment. The pills were there, spotlit in the glow of the small light inside the compartment. He fumbled one of the amber plastic bottles open, hands shaking so badly it took him several tries to get past the childproof cap. He wasn’t even sure how many he poured out. He wasn’t about to stop and count. He needed the drug in his system now. He chewed them, and the bitter taste alone began to calm him.

He held onto the pill bottle tightly in one hand, one of his two lifelines. She laid a hand on his thigh and he pressed his other hand over hers. The other lifeline. He was glad she didn’t say anything, just let him relax into the seat, eyes closed, blocking out everything else while clinging to her and to the pills. He waited for the high to come and take him away from himself, from what he had just let her do. What he had helped her do. What he had done.

She parked the car much sooner than he expected. He was only just feeling the first gentle touch of the Vicodin, the tingling at the edges of his being. He opened his eyes. They were at the edge of a well-lit parking lot. A hospital building filled the view through the windshield. A building he was as familiar with as he was with his own apartment. “Emanuel?”

“He’ll want to finish what he started.”

It took a moment for Archie to put the pieces together.

“Susan.”

“She’s out of the ICU. They expect her to make it. He isn’t pleased about that.”

There was no point asking how she knew all of this. This was what she did. He wondered briefly how close she had been to him for the past twenty-four hours, if she had really needed the whole day to get to him or if she had only needed some time to put the rest of her plans in motion. It didn’t matter now. What mattered was that he was going to kill the bomber, and if he didn’t fuck this up like he had fucked up everything else, he might be able to save Susan again while he was at it.

“Where is she?”

“Where’s the fun in it if I tell you everything at once? I’ll take you there.”

“There isn’t time for your games!”

“There’s always time for my games. Come along.” She got out of the car. Archie poured out a handful of pills and stuffed them in his pocket before following. He was going to need them if she was going to keep pulling this crap.

It was raining again and she was already running toward the building, head ducked into her coat, a commonplace Portland posture. Archie caught up quickly and they rushed through the automatic glass doors into the atrium together. “This guy doesn’t care much about collateral damage,” he muttered to her, glancing around at the employees and family members milling around the place. “We need to clear the building.”

“That’s easy enough.” They reached the middle of the atrium. A few tables and chairs were scattered around for people to sit with their food from the coffee-and-pastries stand built into one wall. Without a pause, Gretchen hopped up on top of one of the tables, long coat flapping around her legs as she did, drew Archie’s gun and fired one shot into the linoleum next to the table -- concerningly close to Archie’s brain-caked shoes. He jumped back, as the rest of the room went dead silent.

“Hello, people of Portland!” Gretchen announced to the whole room, smiling brightly at them. “You remember me, right? You’ve got my face on all your billboards and tour buses, don’t you? Oh, look!” She pointed -- with the gun -- to a teenager in line at the coffee bar, wearing one of the infamous “Run, Gretchen” shirts that some local “edgy” artist had been screenprinting. “You’re wearing my shirt! How cute! Anyway,” she concluded, “your local Hero Cop and I” -- she waved the gun toward Archie and he flinched as he saw recognition dawn on several faces in the crowd -- “have some business to take care of in here tonight. So I highly recommend that you all get the fuck out.”

The silence held for another thirty seconds, as she hopped off the table, grabbed Archie by the arm and led him through the crowd toward a hall in the back of the room. Then the screaming and the running and the shoving started, all of it conveniently opening up a very neat path for them as everyone did everything they could to get as far away from the two of them as possible.

“I was just gonna pull the fire alarm, but I guess that works too.”

“I’ve always wanted to do something like that,” she said cheerily. “It was fun!”

The pills were taking full effect now, and he felt lighter than he should have as they hurried down the hallway and up a back stairwell, the edges of things softening. He only vaguely heard the lock-down announcement issued over the intercom or noticed the people hugging the wall in terror to let them pass by.

By the time they reached the next hall, it was completely empty, all the doors along the sides shut tight with the blinds down on those few that have windows. Gretchen led the way and stopped in front of a door like all the others. “In here.”

“Give me the gun.”

She handed it over magnanimously. “You have three shots. Try to use them better than last time.”

She stepped back so Archie could try the handle. Locked. Good procedure. He kicked it in easily, not making the mistake of giving warning like Nguyen had.  
There were two beds in the room. Susan sat bolt upright in the left-hand bed, still in a hospital gown, still covered with a scratchy standard-issue blanket, eyes wide and staring at the man sitting on the edge of the other bed. He was obviously not a fellow patient. He didn’t look much like a psychotic bomber either. He looked, most of all, like the quintessential Northwest Man, thin and bearded, in worn jeans and hiking boots and a flannel shirt over a Powell’s T-shirt. He wasn’t looking at Susan. He was looking straight at the door -- straight at Archie. He was waiting for them.


	6. Chapter 6

“What happened to  _ you _ ?” said Susan.

Considering _ she _ was heavily bruised and bandaged and had only recently gotten out of the ICU and was now sharing a room with the bomber they had been after all year, Archie was briefly thrown by the question. Then he remembered that he was covered in his own blood and Nguyen’s brains and probably had a handprint, or at least a bruise, on his face. Not to mention he drenched from the walk across the parking lot and probably obviously pretty high. “The usual,” he said, keeping the gun trained on the so-far silent and unmoving Northwest Bomber.

“That could mean literally anything with you.”

Gretchen stepped into the room behind him and laid a hand on his shoulder.

“Oh,” said Susan. “The usual.”

“Gretchen,” the bomber spoke for the first time, and Archie’s hand tightened around the gun as he heard the same strain of desperation in that voice that he heard too often in his own. Nobody else would have noticed his reaction, but standing so close to him that they were touching, she did.

“Jealous, darling?”

“Sweetheart, if I spent my emotional energy on being jealous of every man you’ve suckered, I wouldn’t have any left over to hate myself with.”

“I’m sure you’d find it in you.”

“ _ HEY!” _ the bomber shouted suddenly, making all three of them jump at the sudden change from his calm demeanor. Susan’s eyes went wide and her face went more pale when she jumped, and she started shaking. “ _ I’M  _ the one with the bomb,  _ pay attention to me. _ ”

“Fair point,” Archie admitted. Maybe taking that many pills  _ before _ the standoff had been a bad idea. He needed to focus, despite the fact that his brain was telling him he could just float away into the pleasant fuzz of the world. “Where is the bomb? What do you want? Talk to me. I’m listening.”

The man pointed at Susan. “Show them.”

She raised her hands from under the blanket, holding up a rectangular device. One hand was pressed down on a legitimate big red button on the top of it. It took a great effort for Archie to stop himself from laughing at it. It made sense, though. Nothing about this was supposed to be subtle: the bomber wanted them to know exactly what it was.

“If she lets go,  _ that _ will go off as well as the others.”

“Where are the others?”

“Around.”

“That’s not the only way to trigger them, is it?” He wouldn’t have put all his eggs in one basket, not when Susan and Archie had already gotten away from him once. 

“No.”

“What’s the other way?”

The bomber held up his own hand. A much smaller device was clenched in it. Interesting. A second dead man’s switch, but this one wouldn’t blow up itself, it was just a remote for the others. The bomber was hoping to get out alive. That would make this easier. Archie always found it easier to deal with situations where he was the one with the least to lose.

“How do you want this to end?” Archie asked him.

“You and her --” he jerked his head at Susan -- “die. Gretchen and I leave. If Gretchen won’t leave with me, she can die too.”

“Let Susan go. She isn’t part of this. She just always manages to get in the way. Like a cat.”

“Hey!” said Susan. “Rude!”

“He’s trying to save your life, Pigeon,”Gretchen put in from behind him. “Maybe you should try staying out of the way and let him do his job for once.”

Archie wished  _ both _ of them would just stop talking. He kept his eyes on the bomber and tried to ignore the other two. “Are you willing to do that? Let Susan go so the three of us can sort this out?”

“I couldn’t if I wanted to,” said the bomber. “She’s got her hand on the button already, remember?”

“I can take it from her.”

The bomber considered, then nodded. “If you put down the gun and take the bomb from her, she can go.”

“Okay.” Moving slowly, he set the gun on the floor and stepped away from Gretchen, into the room. She squeezed his shoulder briefly before letting her hand fall away from him. He bent over Susan, his back to the bomber, and laid his hands over hers. One pressed down on the button. With the other, he slipped the box cutter out of his pocket, slid it open and pressed the handle into her palm. “Get out of the building and as far away as fast as you can,” he whispered to her. “If Gretchen gets in your way, cut her. Preferably on the face.” 

“Every once in a while you say something that makes me think you might not be a total whackjob after all,” Susan whispered back shakily. That was good, Archie thought. That meant she was going to do what he said, and not do something stupid instead. He supported the bomb with his now-free hand, made sure the button was secure, and eased the device out of Susan’s grasp. She released it, held her breath for a split second while she made sure that she really hadn’t been blown to smithereens, and then slipped out of the bed, around Archie and toward the door. 

He didn’t see what happened. He was busy being very slow and deliberate about turning around, keeping his eyes glued to the bomb clenched white-knuckled in his hands. He heard the footsteps, heard a scuffle, then silence. By the time he was able to see the outcome, Gretchen had Susan by the hair and the box cutter against her throat -- but Susan’s hands were wrapped around hers, not to try to pull them away but very clearly holding them in place, and Gretchen’s expression was one of surprised amusement. 

“ _ Oh no _ ,” Susan overarticulated once she could see Archie was looking their way, “looks like the Beauty Killer has me hostage! You better not do anything incredibly stupid and self sacrificing like blowing yourself up, or she’ll probably cut my throat to express her impotent rage at not being able to fuck and/or torture you anymore!”

Archie looked to Gretchen for  _ some _ kind of reaction to Susan’s sudden decision to apparently hold  _ herself _ hostage. Gretchen just grinned and shrugged at him. “You heard the girl,” she agreed.

“ _ God Fucking Dammit, Susan!” _

_ “ONCE AGAIN,”  _ shouted the bomber,  _ “THIS IS ABOUT  _ **_ME_ ** _!” _

In the brief pause after the shouting stopped, Archie heard the distant sound of sirens.

“Darling, I don’t suppose you could hurry this up a little?”

“Could everybody just _shut up_ and stop being _crazy_ for thirty fucking seconds so I can _think?_ ” Archie snapped. The noise was too much, the pills were too much, the fact that he was _holding a bomb_ was too much. This was it, this was the day he was finally going to get them all killed because he was too high to function. This was the world’s most weirdly specific anti-drug PSA.

He focused on the bomber. The man was right: for the moment, this was about him. Not Gretchen’s headgames, not the police on their way, not  _ whatever  _ Susan was doing. This was about the one lonely murderer who’d lost the same thing Archie was most afraid of losing. That was something he could understand, something he could work with.

“Okay,” Archie said, looking only at the bomber. “You’re right. This is about you. You can still get out of here. You and Gretchen, together. Get out of the building together and set it all off. She won’t stay here to die with me, she wouldn’t do that for anyone. And she won’t be able to choose me over you when I’m a pile of detective salsa. That would be a little gross even for her. So that’s it. You’ve won. What are you waiting for?”

“I don’t want her to choose me because the options are me or an exploded corpse. I want her to choose me because she  _ wants  _ to be  _ mine _ and not  _ yours _ .”

“Okay. Then it might help if you stopped talking about her like she wasn’t here and actually  _ asked  _ her.”

The bomber turned to Gretchen -- who was watching Archie over Susan’s head, clearly completely uninterested in paying attention to the man with the bombs. Archie pulled an exasperated face at her behind the bomber’s back. She had to go along with this, she had to  _ understand _ this. She rolled her eyes at him and sighed, and then finally looked at the bomber. “You want to ask me something?” she said, sounding bored with the whole thing already. Archie groaned internally.

The bomber swallowed. He was too nervous to keep his eyes on her, they kept flitting around the room before landing back on her only briefly. “You heard the question,” he snapped impatiently.

“Ask me yourself.”

“Okay. Okay. So. Okay.”

The police were going to get there before he got the damn words out. Archie focused on holding the button and the bomb and his tongue instead of barking at him to hurry up. 

“I know that you -- you didn’t want to be mine before. But haven’t I proved myself to you? Everything I’ve done was for you -- and it’s a whole lot more than  _ he’s  _ ever done. Will you choose me over him now?”

She paused for a painfully long time, head tilted to the side as if considering, while Archie held his breath, his eyes glued to her face, trying to telepathically make her understand what he needed her to do. “Yes,” she said finally. “Of course.”

Archie started breathing again. Gretchen extricated her hands from Susan’s grasp and stepped around her, toward the bomber, who stood up to meet her. She turned so he had to turn away from Archie and Susan as she draped her arms over his shoulders and kissed him. Archie forced himself not to watch, and instead moved toward Susan and whispered to her, and thank god this time she listened and slipped quietly out of the room. Archie looked back at Gretchen and the bomber despite himself, just in time to see her gently break the kiss and put her mouth against his ear.

“Do me one favor,” she murmured, just loud enough for Archie to hear. He felt like he was going to throw up again just from being in the same room as this. “Anything.”

Her hand closed over the bomber’s, over the dead man’s switch wrapped in his fingers. “She looked up, over the bomber’s shoulder, at Archie. Her gaze was flat, emotionless. “I want to do it. Let me blow him up myself, to prove to you that I only want to belong to you.”

There wasn’t even a moment’s hesitation. “Yes, of course, do it.” She pressed her thumb onto the button and gently took the device out of his hand. 

Archie froze, a chill sweeping through him in the brief moment when she held onto the button, perfectly still, and held his eyes, and he wondered suddenly if he had it all wrong. If she was actually going to do it, just to prove to him that he shouldn’t presume that he knew her.

Then she brought up the other hand, still holding the box cutter, and slashed it across the bomber’s throat. 

Susan rushed back into the room at almost the same moment. “I could only find medical tape, do you think it will -- ” she stopped short in the doorway, staring at the bomber, blood pouring from his throat as Gretchen dropped him unceremoniously to the floor. 

“It’ll have to work, just hurry, please,” said Archie. His body was suddenly heavy with exhaustion, and he was afraid he was going to drop this thing if he had to hold onto it much longer. Not to mention his face was starting to itch like crazy and there was nothing he could do about it until he could put the bomb down. Susan unwound the roll of tape and pressed it down over the button, wrapping it around and around the bomb and over and over the button until there was an inch-thick layer of tape over it. She and Archie locked eyes. He counted to three and they took both their hands off the button.

Nothing happened. He set the thing down gently on the bed and hugged her tight for a minute before turning back to Gretchen, already prepared to explain that that was a completely platonic hug caused by the rush of adrenaline from almost blowing up together, but she didn’t ask. She just stepped over the bomber’s crumpled form, dropped the box cutter on the floor next to him, twisted her fingers painfully tightly into Archie’s hair and yanked him forward to kiss him hard.

“I just needed to get  _ his _ taste out of my mouth,” she said when she broke off and let him stagger back away from her, stunned and overwhelmed. “If you  _ ever _ make me do something that disgusting  _ ever  _ again I will enucleate you wide-awake without anesthetic.” She stretched out her hand toward Susan, who flinched away before realizing Gretchen was offering the trigger for her to help tape up. 

Archie had read enough of her victoms’ autopsy reports to wince at the word “enucleate” — removing the eyeballs. “If I ever have to  _ see _ something like that again, I’ll beg you to,” said Archie while they got the button safely fastened down and set harmlessly on the bed next to the other one. “But it worked, didn’t it? Besides -- ”

_ BANG. _

Susan screamed. Archie swore. Gretchen whirled around. The bomber had pulled himself across the floor to where Archie had left the gun. She stomped hard on his hand, then reached down and twisted the gun out of it. She straightened up, stepped back from him and pointed it at his head. 

Archie’s heart was pounding, but not as hard as it should have been, considering. The pills were doing him some good after all. He was able to take a second to assess.  _ He _ obviously hadn’t been hit -- he was very high, but it took more than Vicodin to get high enough to miss something like that. Susan would be screaming a lot more if she had been hit. Gretchen had reacted too quickly -- even for her, getting shot should have slowed her down. So they were all right. The bomber wasn’t dead, but he was weak, he had taken a desperate chance and missed. And now Gretchen had him in her sights.

“ _ Wait _ .”

“Why?” Gretchen glanced at him only briefly, long enough to see that he looked more-or-less alive, wanting to keep her attention on the bomber so he didn’t pull anything else before she could finish him off. “You’re not going to try to convince me we should leave this one to due process, are you?”

“No. I want to do it.”

“Archie, no!” Susan burst out, but he ignored her. Gretchen held out the gun to him, but he ignored that too. He moved carefully around both of them, shoved the bomber onto his back and sank down to straddle him, knees pressing the man’s arms into the floor to stop his weak attempts at fighting back. He picked up the box cutter from where Gretchen had dropped it. He was vaguely aware of Susan trying to move toward him and say something more, and he was vaguely aware that she stopped short, but he was too focused on what he was doing, and his vision was too tunelled, to figure out why. He cut the Powell’s shirt open down the middle and pulled it apart to leave the man’s torso bare, to see his chest heaving with pain and fear. With that wound in his throat, he wasn’t making much noise besides the ragged sounds of his breathing and the occasional choking whimper.

Archie glanced up and saw why Susan’s protest had stopped -- Gretchen had her, for real this time, one arm holding her tight against her, the other holding the gun at the base of her jaw. Susan stared at him wide-eyed, shaking her head, mouthing “No,” but afraid to say anything aloud. He didn’t care. It wasn’t  _ her  _ permission he needed. It was Gretchen’s. He had seen what she did to people who mimicked her without her blessing. She met his eyes and understood the question. She was practically glowing as she nodded to him.

He didn’t worry about cutting too deeply this time. Making sure it scarred cleanly wasn’t going to be an issue. The man wasn’t going to live long enough for that. So he could cut as deeply and as roughly as he wanted, stabbing the blade in and dragging it with as much strength as he could find through the flesh, slicing a ragged gash of a curve over the bomber’s chest, deep enough to scrape against the bone. 

“Your first mistake,” he said as he started the second curve, “was killing my partner.” The words came out as a vague, confused mumble, spoken mostly to himself, but he saw the bomber’s eyes watching him and hoped he understood. “Your second mistake was thinking Gretchen could ever belong to one of us, when the truth is, of course, that you and I both belong to her.” He sliced down harder than before as he brought the bottom of the shape down to a point, completing the heart. Then he trailed the blade down to the man’s stomach and pressed down, breaking through skin and fat and muscle. It was more difficult than he had expected. Physically, not emotionally. Emotionally, he only vaguely registered what he was doing, and he wondered whether it would disgust him if he weren’t high, or whether his anger at the bomber would drive him on, or whether the satisfaction he felt now was real. It didn’t matter because right now, this was what he wanted, and right now, it felt good.

Archie didn’t hear the sirens entering the parking lot, or the voice on the megaphone outside the window. He didn’t hear anything until Gretchen spoke. Even then, it took him a moment to be sure it was her real voice, and not the version of her that spoke to him in his head when she wasn’t around.

“I’m sorry, darling,” she said softly, “but we don’t have any more time. You have to finish it now.”

He looked up at her again. Susan had stopped protesting and was leaning limp against her, staring at him wide-eyed, silent tears streaming down her face. But Gretchen watched him with an expression that on anyone else he would have called love. Maybe it was. “Go on,” she breathed.

He pressed his fingers against the bomber’s neck, over the cut Gretchen had made, till they rested against the jugular. She had only barely missed it. Not missed, he realized. She didn’t miss. It had been deliberate; she had meant for him to survive that first cut. She had meant for all of this to happen. Archie had only done exactly what she had wanted, as usual.

It didn’t matter now. He was too far gone to care.

He made the cut, clean across the artery. He kept his eyes on the man’s face and his hand on his neck until the spray stopped and the pulse stilled. It didn’t take long.

Then Gretchen was at his side, pulling him away and steadying him up onto his feet. He wasn’t clear on how they got out of the building, what side entrance released them into the brisk rainy night lit by the gleam of blue and white lights just far enough around the building not to see them. It didn’t matter: He had done his part and he could trust Gretchen to take care of the rest. It wasn’t until they got into the car and he heard  _ three  _ doors slam shut that he realized what was wrong with this picture.

“Susan, what are you doing?”

Still wrapped in only a hospital gown, Susan had followed them the whole way and gotten into the backseat of her own accord. Gretchen didn’t wait for them to sort it out. She pealed away, thudding over a curb to avoid the blockade at the hospital entrance.

“Oh, what are you saying, Archie, is getting in a car with a serial killer a  _ bad  _ idea? I’m sorry, I guess I’m  _ confused _ , I thought law enforcement was supposed to set a good example for citizens, and based on your example I thought this was exactly what I was supposed to do! I thought the only thing I was doing wrong was that I wasn’t  _ sleeping with her _ . Also, it turns out murder is not bad actually? That’s what I learned from Detective Sheridan today! I can’t believe I mised that lesson in school. Thank you  _ so  _ much for getting me up to speed on these things!” 

Susan’s voice was getting faster and higher pitched the more she talked. Archie could guess that in addition to being freaked out and pissed off at him, she was probably also very much regretting having gotten in the car, no matter what she said. “I know we’re in the middle of an elude, but can we stop and let her out?” he murmured to Gretchen.

She shook her head. “We’re in the middle of an elude  _ and _ we’ve got a plane to catch. We can leave her in the trunk at the airport and call someone to pick her up once we’re gone.”

“First of all, I’m  _ right here _ , I can hear you! Second, that’s dangerous, sixteen kids died by getting trapped in trunks just between 2005 and —“

“ _ Shut up, Susan!” _ Archie and Gretchen shouted in unison. More than the words, the fact that the two of them said it in chorus and in disturbingly identical tones successfully stunned Susan into silence. She resorted to making angry faces at them in the rearview mirror.

They sped away through the rain, classical music emanating faintly from the stereo. The lights and sirens surrounding the hospital were left far behind. Susan kept the silence for a remarkable amount of time, as she mentally went over everything that had just happened, absorbing and processing it as well as making sure she was remembering everything clearly to write down as soon as she had a chance. They had made it out of town and onto the winding, wooded section of Highway 99 before she finally couldn’t take it any longer.

“You know, I think we’re at the point where you can stop playing up the Hannibal Lecter crap with us,” she blurted out from the backseat. Archie winced. This was sure about to happen. “Do you even  _ like _ classical music?”

“No,” Gretchen acknowledged flatly. “I wanted to. But no. It’s boring as fuck.”

“Put on something you like.”

“No.”

“Why? You think I’ll make fun of you?”

Gretchen laughed. “I literally can’t think of anything I could care about less than what  _ you _ think of my taste in music, Miss Blink-182 bumper sticker.”

“You think  _ Archie _ will make fun of you?”

There was silence. Well, not silence, exactly, but Chopin was suddenly the only sound in the car.

“ _ You do!” _

“He likes French cinema. He married an artist.”  
“You’re kidding. You’re _intimidated_ by him! You think he’s too classy for you!”

Her mouth was tight and narrow, holding in whatever worry she had.

“Oh my god, you’re  _ so insecure _ . Your  _ whole _ femme fatale woman of mystery thing is just to stop anyone from knowing a single real thing about you, because you don’t think the real you is  _ good enough _ . That’s so  _ textbook _ . Is  _ any  _ of it real? Do you even like killing people or do you just do it to scare people so nobody will ever ask you what your favorite movie is?”

Gretchen didn’t answer -- it was Archie who spoke, voice strained and urgent. He didn’t look back at her, instead his eyes were fixed on Gretchen’s face. “Susan, I know you’ve never done anything tactfully in your entire life but if you want any of us to get out alive please don’t do this  _ while she’s driving _ .”

Susan had been too wrapped up in her triumphant roasting to notice what Archie had -- that the car was speeding up by the second, and swerving dangerously from one side of the lane to the other. 

Archie put a hand gently on Gretchen’s arm. “Pull over. Pull over.  _ Pull over _ .” He had to repeat himself several times with increasing intensity before the message got through and the car pulled to a screeching halt on a dime, skidding to the side of the road. All three sat in silence for a moment.

“Susan,” said Archie after they had had a chance to get used to no longer being an inch from death, “plug your ears, this is gonna gross you out.”

Instead, Susan instantly leaned forward between the seats and stuck out a digital recorder to hold it right between them. “I’m ready.”

“Where were you  _ keeping _ that?” Archie asked, deliberately not looking closely at the thin, rain-drenched hospital gown that was still all she was wearing.

“I’ve got my priorities straight,” was all she said. Archie shook his head and tried to ignore her.

He turned back to Gretchen, took her face in his hands and turned it toward him, smearing bloody handprints on her cheeks as he did so. “Look at me.” 

She met his eyes and for a second he forgot everything that he was going to say. God, she was beautiful. “Gretchen. Sweetheart. You’ve won. You own me now. I’m not going anywhere, not even if you spend the rest of the drive blasting Kesha.” He broke eye contact for a moment to glance back at Susan. “That’s a bad pop artist, right?”

“Oh, yeah,” Susan confirmed. “That was perfect. I’m proud of you.”

“Thanks.” He looked back to Gretchen. “Or you can keep pretending you like Chopin. Whatever you want. I’m not here to judge you, and I’m also not here to demand that you get more in touch with your true self or whatever. I’m here because I have a severe case of Stockholm Syndrome and you and I have both done an excellent job of sabotaging all attempts to treat it. And nothing is going to take that away from us.”

He kissed her on the forehead. Susan gagged. “Jesus Christ, I changed my mind. The concentration of crazy is way too high in here; I’m gonna get out and walk.” She reached for the door handle and pulled ineffectively on it just as Archie reached behind Gretchen and pushed the button to activate the child lock.

“Don’t be stupid, Susan. We’re miles out of town, it’s raining, you just got out of the hospital and you don’t have any real clothes on. You’re stuck in the crazy car at least until we get to Newberg.”

“Ew, don’t leave me in  _ Newberg _ .”

Archie decided to go back to ignoring her. “Are you good to drive now, sweetheart?”

“Yes. Thank you.” Gretchen smiled at him and ruffled his hair, and he melted into a happy warm haze -- though that might have also had something to do with the Vicodin. 

She pulled smoothly away from the shoulder and they were off again. A few miles down the road, Archie vaguely registered the radio change to a pop station and Susan stage-whisper “I knew it!” He leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes, letting himself drift away into the motion of the car and the saccharine tune of the radio. At least for the moment, Susan was satisfied, Gretchen was happy, and Archie could be high in peace. It wasn’t exactly a happy ending -- but it was as close as he was going to get. 


End file.
